After facing pushback from Gov. Ned Lamont, state lawmakers are drastically revising a bill that would have taken the power to appoint Connecticut’s child advocate away from the governor.
The new bill, which is still being drafted, won’t take that appointment power away at all, according to Rep. Mary Welander, D-Orange, the bill’s sponsor.
Instead, the new bill would make adjustments to the timeline for reappointment and require more transparency about the work of the child advocate, Welander said.
It’s a far cry from the bill lawmakers passed out of committee earlier this month.
“We’re working on a compromise, and I appreciate the time and attention the governor has spent on the proposal and his recognizing the importance of this office,” said Welander.
Under the new version of the bill, the governor would still receive a list of a few candidates by the Office of the Child Advocate Advisory Committee and make a selection from that list, as he does now, Welander said, adding that his choice would go to the Nominations Committee and the legislature for confirmation.
Rob Blanchard, a spokesperson for Lamont’s office, said that the original bill threatened to disrupt the balance of power that currently exists for appointing the child advocate. He said that because the governor appoints the position and the legislature approves it, it “ensures both executive accountability and legislative oversight.”
“If the Child Advocate is no longer positioned within the executive branch, it could lose key investigative powers that allow it to effectively scrutinize state-run programs and intervene in cases of child endangerment,” Blanchard said. “Instead of strengthening protections for vulnerable children, this bill risks making oversight less effective at a time when we need it the most.”
But advocates of the previous version of the bill say that the Child Advocate, which acts as an investigator on behalf of the state’s children and issues reports on the treatment and care of some of the state’s most vulnerable kids, often must criticize the executive branch.
Therefore, they argue, the position should not be appointed by the governor. They say that doing the job well sometimes creates friction with the executive branch because the child advocate must investigate the commissioners appointed by the governor. The more rigorously the office investigates, the more heated that relationship can become.
“I think, from a good governance standpoint, the [original] bill is a no-brainer,” said Sarah Eagan, who left the child advocate’s position over the summer after more than a decade of service, in an interview before lawmakers decided to rework the measure.
“Bills exist in the political context, so I’m sure it will have a very hard time politically. But I think it’s a very important bill for the effectiveness of that office and its work.”
The original bill to reform the appointing process, passed earlier this month by the Committee on Children, would allow an advisory committee to choose the child advocate, then the legislature would approve that person.
The bill passed committee with broad bipartisan support.
Edwin Colon, a member of the Office of the Child Advocate Advisory Committee, said that the earlier version of the bill addresses a recommendation made by the committee in its annual report.
“It puts the child advocate in a very sort of delicate position, which is, you are appointed by the executive at the same time you are providing oversight and kind of watchdog functions for the executive,” Colon said. “There’s a potential for political influence, for kind of creating a chilling effect on the child advocate’s ability to do and fulfill her mission.”
Eagan said although she never experienced any direct pressure from the governor or his staff to adjust the way she did her work for fear of losing reappointment, the politics behind the process was in the back of her mind.
During Eagan’s time in the position, and since her departure, the office has issued reports on issues such as child fatalities, sexual abuse and educational neglect that have criticized several state agencies including the courts, the Department of Disability Services, and the state Department of Children and Families.
But Blanchard said the original bill put too much appointment authority in the hands of the advisory committee, which has many members appointed by legislators.
Colon said that the board, which is nonpartisan and independent, is a more appropriate entity to appoint the child advocate.
“We’ve been having a lot of back and forth about this,” Welander said during a March 6 committee meeting. “I know that the bottom line is that we want to make sure that the most vulnerable of our children are being cared for, and that we are holding everyone who is responsible for them accountable for that care.”
A similar bill went through the Government Administrations and Elections Committee last session with unanimous agreement, but it wasn’t called in the Senate. The bill had some different details — it would have established a committee to independently select the child advocate, where this year’s bill includes legislative involvement.
The Department of Children and Families hasn’t issued public testimony on this year’s proposal, but internal emails The Connecticut Mirror obtained through an open records request hint at displeasure about last year’s proposal.
On March 22, 2024, Susan Hamilton, the department’s general counsel, sent an email flagging the bill for several other department officials. She briefly explained the bill and said that because “it doesn’t expand their authority,” she didn’t “think we have a dog in the fight.”
Vincent Russo, DCF’s chief of government relations and policy, quickly replied.
“I saw it and I hate it. Already brought it to the Govs attention,” Russo wrote. Later that evening, he said that while he hadn’t heard yet what Lamont’s office thought of the bill, that he was “meeting with them now.”
In a Wednesday statement, DCF Commissioner Jodi Hill-Lilly said the department hasn’t been involved in working for or against this year’s measure.
“We support the Governor’s position on this bill. DCF has not provided testimony nor lobbied Legislators against the bill,” Hill-Lilly said in a written statement.
Officials and advocates said the focus of the watchdog role should be on children.
“It’s very important that kids have a politically independent person running the office, without the cloud of the appointment process hanging over that person,” Eagan said. “And obviously my comments are not academic in nature. They’re experiential. I ran that office for 11 years and tried to do it as independently as I could, but the shadow of the appointment and reappointment process is always there.”
At times, the reappointment process in particular has been difficult, Eagan said, recalling in 2020 when she waited for over a year to hear if she would be reappointed.
Under the new version of the bill being drafted, the meaningful changes to the current process would regard reappointment, Welander said, to create a clearer deadline. That way, the appointee wouldn’t be waiting for an excessive time period as they face uncertainty about the future of their position.
Additionally, changes to the bill would include a requirement for reports about the work of the child advocate to be distributed, so that it would be clear to the legislature and the public whether the person in the position is doing their job well. By this logic, Welander said, someone doing the job well would be safe in their position.
“If you’re doing your job exceedingly well and protecting kids to the extent that you can, you shouldn’t have to worry about job security,” Welander said.
Following Eagan’s departure from the role, Associate Child Advocate Christina Ghio became the acting child advocate.
The committee is now in the final stage of the selection process for the new child advocate and will send three finalists’ names to the governor, who will make the final choice.
“Legislation is always a work in progress,” Welander said. “It’s important to have these conversations even if the outcome is not exactly how we had hoped or how it had been intended.”